Book on controversial Taiwan death row inmate to be translated by U.S. program

Taipei, March 2 (CNA) A book by Taiwanese author Chang Chuan-fen (張娟芬) about the life of Taiwan's oldest man on death row and the vestiges of the country's authoritarian past has been selected to be translated by a U.S.-based translation program.

Seattle-based translator Lya Shaffer is the one taking on Chang's 2022 book "Liumang Wang Xin-fu" (流氓王信福) as part of the American Literary Translators Association's (ALTA) 2025 Emerging Translator Mentorship Program.

"As a literary translator with roots in Taipei, Lya is committed to amplifying marginalized voices, particularly from Taiwan," according to Shaffer's page on the ALTA's website.

The book is about the life of Wang Xin-fu, 72, who was sentenced to death in 2008 for being with the murderer and an accomplice at a karaoke bar where two police officers were shot dead in 1990 despite a lack of evidence incriminating Wang in the shootings.

Wang appealed the ruling, but in 2011, Taiwan's Supreme Court issued a final verdict upholding Wang's death sentence.

In her book, Chang documents Wang's life, including being labeled by police in his youth as a "liumang," meaning "hooligan," under martial law imposed by the administration of late President Chiang Kai-shek (蔣中正).

He was sent to Xiaoliuqiu Island in the early 1970s to be disciplined for "wearing long hair and colorful shirts" and "often wandering outside late at night."

The stigma from that label, Chang wrote, could have influenced his death sentence and his decision to flee to China, at a time when Taiwan's judiciary made a conscious effort to keep the process from adjudication to execution short to maintain social order.

The Control Yuan, Taiwan's top government watchdog, and human rights groups have called for a retrial of Wang's case, believing that Wang was framed and that the case was a miscarriage of justice.

"This story is a powerful call to arms against indifference and resignation in the face of authoritarian systems of injustice. It deserves to be shared with readers worldwide," Shaffer's ALTA page said of Chang's book.

Shaffer will be mentored under the program by Taiwanese-American translator Lin King (金翎).

King shot to fame in Taiwan in November 2024 after winning the United States National Book Award (NBA) for her translation of fellow NBA winner Yang Shuangzi's (楊双子) 2020 novel Taiwan Travelogue (臺灣漫遊錄).

King has received the PEN/Robert J. Dau Short Story Prize for Emerging Writers. She is the translator of The Boy from Clearwater (來自清水的孩子) by Yu Pei-yun (游珮芸) and illustrator Zhou Jian-xin (周見信).

The Taiwan Academy under the Taipei Economic and Cultural Office in Los Angeles, which co-organizes the ALTA mentorship program, said Shaffer and King's work will be unveiled at the annual ALTA Conference in early November in Tucson, Arizona.